Entering the Weave

Coel Amberglass was exhausted. Over the past two days he had flown hundreds of miles as a crow and spent all of his sleeping hours in furious discussions with the other members of the Conclave. But even though the hotel room was dark and peaceful, a creeping panic was keeping him awake.

He released his senses and saw the golden twinkle of nearby minds like static fireflies in his imagination. Seven other people and a multitude of small mammals and birds were in the hotel, most of them burning with the steady rhythm of sleep. Scurrying beneath these larger minds was the busy, background glow of insects.

He looked still further, stretching his mind out into the cold night. Nocturnal hunters and their prey flew and skittered around everywhere, illuminating the night with their activity. An occasional blurred mind zigzagged its way home along the dim streets, but still there was no sign of what had awoken him.

Unbidden, Joshua Bennett’s face flickered into focus and a dreadful feeling began to rise in him. He concentrated for a moment and sent a powerful pulse through the village, like a sonar signal. He inspected the reflected echoes and knew that his fear had been accurate. Josh was in some sort of danger.

It took him a little while to focus in on Josh’s mind, and when he did he almost lost the connection. The boy’s mind was seething wildly, as if he was the victim of brutal torture. It was like a boiling sun about to go nova.

Coel jerked his body upright and leapt out of bed, belying his age and recent tiredness. He grabbed his staff and hurtled out of the room, bounding down the stairs and burst out of the front door of the tiny hotel. The night air chilled his skin, which had turned clammy after his mental explorations. He controlled his shiver as he fixed his bearings and hurried off into the night.

He was concentrating too hard on what could be the matter with Josh to notice two burly figures emerge from an alleyway as he passed by. They noticed him however, and with synchronised leers they set off after the older man.

Coel jumped when he felt the heavy hand thump onto his shoulder.

“Oi! Where do you think you’re going?”

Coel tried to quicken his pace and reached behind him with his thoughts. He expected to brush his assailant off with a simple suggestion of power, but there was something very wrong. The man’s mind was like a swamp. There was nothing but rottenness and Coel could not find anything to exert any leverage on. It was like trying to climb a wall made of rancid fish.

The hand on his shoulder jerked him to a halt.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

Coel felt a cold sense of helplessness, which was quickly turning into fear. He had always been able to rely on his powers. He could not remember a time when he had not been in control.

He turned to face the two men.

He could feel them towering over him. They smelt like they’d been drinking, but that did not explain the fetid wrongness of their minds.

“I’m just going for a walk. That’s alright isn’t it.” Coel stressed his words carefully trying to find another way into their minds.

One of the men frowned, but the other laughed. “No. That’s not all right. This is our street. You’ve got to pay a tax. Hasn’t he Craig?”

The other man nodded unsurely and Coel saw his chance. Whatever disease was controlling these men had not taken full hold of the other man. Coel unleashed his full power and burrowed as deeply as he could into the other man’s mind.

It was disgusting. The normally beautiful swirls and eddies of golden light that made up a human mind were covered with an ichorous sludge that made the patterns heavy and corrupt. Coel felt nauseous and weak, but he found the triggers he needed and, as quickly as he could, he pulled them and burst back out of the mind.

He sucked cold air into his lungs as he realised that he had been holding his breath.

Craig’s face was contorted, as if he was battling to suppress a sneeze. “Leave the old man alone. He’s only out for a walk.” He blurted after a few seconds.

“What?” The other man said through clenched teeth.

“I said, leave him alone, Billy.” Coel’s power had mastered him now and Craig was getting braver. His voice was steady and calm.

Billy let his hand drop from Coel’s shoulder and turned with menacing slowness to his companion. “What?”

“You heard. Let’s go home.”

He shook his head. “You must think I’m crazy.”

“Not really, just…” But he didn’t finish. Billy launched himself at his friend with fists flailing and teeth bared. The two big men tumbled over and began grappling each other on the floor.

Coel didn’t hesitate. He scurried away from the fight, wondering if this was the infection N’rinde had told the Conclave about. He shuddered at the thought. If humans were as easily affected as insects, then there was even less time than they thought.

They crouched shivering in the darkness for a few minutes, until five stubby candles winked into existence before them. Although they were only small, their flickering light amply illuminated a cramped, dank cellar containing mouldering crates stacked high against the walls. The spectral head floated above the candles defined by the thin plumes of wispy white smoke.

“Who are you?” Josh’s teeth were chattering. He didn’t know if it was from the unnatural cold that seemed to exude from the floor of the cellar, or simple fear.

“I’m one of the original programmers of this Vrealm, but the Doge calls us Traitors. We’ve been imprisoned inside those dreadful statues seemingly forever. My name is Rose.” Her voice was softly tinged with an American accent.

“I’m Josh. And this is Toby.”

“Pleased to meet you. I would shake hands, but…” Rose grimaced.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. At least I’m free for the time being. That room was the most reviled place in this Vrealm. Although it is not the source of the evil that’s here. When you burned my statue you released me from centuries of imprisonment. What year is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“In the real world, what is the date?”

Josh told her and she looked surprised. “Really? I’ve only been here for a year.”

“Why are you called the Traitors?” Toby blurted the question out.

“The Doge and his minions call us that because we were playing to beat him. This is meant to be a game.”

“A game?”

“Yeah, when we first wrote it. A game of Machiavellian intrigue set against the backdrop of a Renaissance city. We thought we were so clever.”

“You’re a real person?”

Rose laughed softly. “That’s a bit impertinent, don’t you think Toby? Do you always ask people you meet if they are real?”

“No, but…Well things are strange here. I guess I’m just not used to it.” Toby grimaced sheepishly. ”Can you get out of this nightmare? Are you still playing a game?”

“No.” Rose’s good humour dissolved. “Not anymore.”

Realisation dawned on Josh. “You got trapped didn’t you. I mean, not in the statue. Trapped online like us.”

Rose nodded. “Yes, only a year ago if your date is accurate. Without the beating of a living heart to tick off the days, time becomes increasingly abstract. But tell me, how did you get here? You didn’t hack your way in did you? I thought I’d made that impossible.”

“We did, sort of. We found a part of the Internet I didn’t know existed.” Toby seemed much more relaxed than Josh felt. “It was a sort of network between the websites, almost as if the connections had evolved into another Internet.”

“You’re very smart, Toby. We called it the Plexus when we first stumbled across it. It seems to be a network that runs parallel to the usual dreary websites that the whole world knows about, but it isn’t hosted on computers, well not any computers that I’ve seen before.”

“You mean the Delphixians?”

Rose shook her head. “Delphixians?”

So they told Rose what ZX82 had told them, and about freeing him from the factory in the snow. She listened intently, nodding eagerly at every new piece of information.

“Fascinating.” She said when he had finished. “Yes. That makes sense. This world is hosted purely on these living machines and that would explain why we were able to create such a realistic simulation.”

A scraping noise from the hall above them stopped their conversation. They sat stock still, straining to hear another sound, but none came.

“It will take them a while to find us down here.” Rose said soothingly. “They’ll be trying to hide from each other for a bit, before the Doge whips them back into order.”

“What are they? The things in the cloaks? Surely they’re not people.”

“I used to think they were the lucky ones. They were just artificial intelligence routines that took over when a player went off line, but this place has given them a gruesome parody of life that the Doge has managed to warp to his own ends. As I’ve said, this world was created as a game, but we never released it to the public and one by one the players dropped out. It wasn’t a very good game really, I suppose, but it was devilishly clever and terribly addictive.”

“You’re Rose Cormack!” Toby said rather too loudly.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“You wrote ‘Shiver’ and then disappeared. Everyone thinks you’re working on the biggest game ever.” Toby looked as though he was going to fall to his knees and start worshipping the translucent head. “Wow! Rose Cormack.”

“I wrote a lot of this world as well. I thought it was my best work at the time.”

“If you created it, why are you stuck here? Why don’t you just go back?”

Rose’s laugh was mirthless. “If only it was so simple. Just click my heels together and go back to Kansas. If only. I don’t know if my body is still alive. I doubt it somehow. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back.”

“You’re the greatest programmer who’s ever lived. You redefined virtual reality games. How can you be trapped?” Toby was beside himself with adoration.

“I’m not the greatest.” Rose smiled and then shrugged. “Well maybe I am, but I still can’t get out. There is no Kung Foo strong enough to combat the Plexus, because it is so…well organic I suppose. You don’t realise you’re trapped until you’re in too deep, but I guess I don’t have to tell you.”

“Someone must have found your body. Taken your VR glasses off; disconnected you.”

“I would imagine so, but this world is more than that. The computer you used to get here is just a vehicle. It can transport you to these worlds, but your mind is what makes you believe that you are here. By definition this world will feel more real than the physical world you have left. I bet you don’t have anything connected to your computer to make you feel cold or wet, do you?”

Toby shook his head.

“But sitting on that damp crate makes you feel both of them, doesn’t it?”

They both nodded slowly. “So? What does that mean?”

“Well your mind is telling you that your butts are wet and cold. Really wet and cold. You don’t have a physical body to get in between the feeling and your mind.”

Toby and Josh looked at each other blankly. “What does that mean? Are we trapped?” Josh ventured, uncertainly.

Rose looked sadly at them. “I’m not sure. I’ve tried everything I can think of to escape, and before I was trapped in the statue I couldn’t find a way out. I’m sorry, I hope it’s different for you two.” Another scraping noise stopped their conversation again. This time it was louder and even Rose looked uncertain. “There are masks and cloaks in these crates. Put them on.”

Josh and Toby opened a couple of the crates to find tattered, wet robes and old scratched masks. They put them on and practised moving. Neither of them could quite master the peculiar rigidity of the puppet folk’s movements, but they felt a little safer in their disguises.

“So who is the Doge?” Josh asked as he lumbered across the damp floor again.

“I just don’t know that answer to that one Josh. He wasn’t one of the original players. I think he turned up just as the last players were leaving and he began to make it interesting again. We thought he was just another player, but he seemed to have some strange power over the way the game progressed. Every strategy he used bore fruit, every tactic was perfect, and he was always playing the game. He was always online. We tried to find out more about him, but he would evade even the most innocent of our questions and then one day he proclaimed himself the ruler of Vienopolis. The Doge. He had effectively won, and there were so few real players here that we couldn’t oppose his triumph. Checkmate.

“And what a checkmate it was. We all stuck about for a while wondering what the game would do with an overall winner.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, so we thought we’d stop playing and maybe start another game, and that’s when we found we couldn’t get back. We were trapped. And then the killings started.”

“Killings?”

“It started out simply as cruelty. The Doge would expose a puppet in front of its peers and order them to destroy it. They all prided themselves on their artificial humanity and they had all come to hate what they really were. This hatred was fuelled by the Doge until eventually he made it illegal to be a puppet. So they live in fear of exposure, even though they all know what they all are.”

“Why don’t they do something about it?”

“Because they’re all so scared of each other. Have you seen what they do to each other when one of their masks slip off? It’s horrible.”

“Yeah, we’ve seen it. They were like animals.”

“It’s not their fault though.” Rose said sadly. “They’re programmed to be the way they are. They’ve broken free of some of their programming, but not all of it. I’m responsible for the way they are.” There was a tremble in her voice now and she squeezed her eyes shut for a second. “It was just meant to be a game.”

“They’re not real, though. I mean they’re not people.”

“Their intelligence is as real as yours or mine, Josh. And they can feel emotional pain as acutely as we can.”

Just then, the rattle of lots of somethings on the steps made them jump up and a group of the puppet people crowded through the entrance. The candles had disappeared and the only light came from dimly glowing lanterns that some of the marionettes carried. They stopped for a second when they saw Josh and Toby but then started rummaging around the room and throwing over crates. They were all muttering and it was hard to make out anything that was being said, but the gist was clear.

“We must find them. He will be angry.”

Josh and Toby had been too slow to hide, but it seemed that their disguises were working. They started casting about the room just like the other figures, until they all started to make their way back out and up the steps. Josh and Toby found themselves bustled along with them. They felt hard wooden limbs digging into their sides and thought they would be discovered at any moment. They could barely find the courage to breathe.

Rose had vanished in the confusion when the puppet people had burst into the underground chamber and there was no sign of her. He hoped she was watching them. There was something comforting about the thought that the creator of the world was looking out for him, even if she was intangible.

Something was pulling at his sleeve and the bile of sheer terror coursed through Josh’s stomach before he realised it was Toby. He tried to pull his arm away without attracting too much attention, but Toby was insistent and Josh suddenly saw why.

The Doge had appeared behind them.

His face held a sneering grin that chilled Josh’s heart. He thought the Doge’s eyes were piercing through his tattered cloak and faded mask. The urge to run away was almost uncontrollable, but Toby’s grip had tightened on his forearm and that slight distraction gave him enough time to realise that the Doge wasn’t even looking at them at all.

He strode past them pushing the puppet people out of the way.

“Have you pathetic rats found anything yet? The first one of you who does can keep their eyes.” Close up, Josh could see the Doge’s face was burned on one side from his ear to his mouth and blood had congealed under his nose.

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd and Josh found himself jolted forward directly into the back of the Doge. Josh backed away and bowed his head, not daring to look up. He felt the Doge turn slowly. He jerked himself backwards, trying to keep his face covered with the shadow of the cowl of his cloak.

“Don’t touch me, worm!”

Josh bobbed his head, desperately trying to convey apologies and supplication with that simple gesture, but it wasn’t enough. The Doge lashed out with his fist, which caught him on his chest sending him sprawling to the hard ground. There was much more power in the blow than any physical effort could account for.

Toby was at his side in an instant and hauled him to his feet, but Josh was stunned by the blow and couldn’t seem to get his feet working quickly enough.

“Come on Josh.” Toby hissed. “He knows who you are.”

The Doge was just standing over them, staring at his hand. There was an instant of hurricane-eye stillness before anyone moved.

“Get them!” He screamed.

The marionettes didn’t know what to do. They started to run around madly, desperately looking for someone to capture, but they didn’t know whom they were meant to be catching.

“It’s them! They look like you!” The Doge shouted furiously through grinding teeth. This confused them even more and they started clutching at each other in their fear and it wasn’t until Josh and Toby had cleared the main group that it became obvious that they were the different ones and the chase began again.

They were running at full speed. They dodged between columns with the speed of terrified foxes chased by ravening hounds. They didn’t know where to run to, they were just running away.

Behind them the confusion had been evaporated by the fear instilled by the Doge and the puppet people were flooding through the enormous chamber like a swarm of insects, but they could not match the speed of their prey.

Slowly, but surely, Josh and Toby put distance between themselves and the chasing horde. Their smoke laden lungs burned with the effort and their legs and arms were beginning to feel heavy, but nothing would stop them running.

A flicker of reddish light appeared ahead of them and it blazed brighter and more substantial as they ran. This was an opening to the outside, an edge to the vast chamber. They could see a bloated red sun squatting in a cloud-streaked sky, dispensing the crimson light of evening over a world of tall spires and cobbled streets.

They ran on past the final columns of the chamber and down some steps that led to the streets. The cobbles were uneven and difficult to run on, but without a backwards glance they raced away. A broad avenue ran perfectly straight into the distance and they raced along it until they reached the first alleyway, which they dodged into hoping the puppet people were still in the building and hadn’t seen them hide.

They collapsed against each other, huffing and puffing like steam engines.

“Are we safe?” Josh panted, knowing there was no real answer.

“I don’t think so. We need to find a place to hide. We can’t stay here.”

Josh nodded, unable to utter a single word.

They heaved themselves up and started jogging along the alleyway, listening intently for any sound of pursuit, but none came and they soon found an open door.

The room beyond was dark and to Josh’s eyes it looked safe. He wanted to curl up behind some of the antique furniture and just sleep there until he woke up from this nightmare, but he knew it was not a dream, not in the normal sense anyway.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Josh. But I’m starting to feel hungry. Are you?”

Josh hadn’t thought about it before, but now that Toby had mentioned it he realised that he was indeed starving. “Yeah. I could eat a horse. How does that work? How long do you think we’ve been inside?”

“I don’t know. Rose said time didn’t work the same way here. We could have been in hours or minutes or days. Who knows?”

“We can’t starve, can we?”

Toby shrugged. “Our bodies in the real world can, maybe they’re telling us we’re hungry, but maybe we just think we should be hungry because we think we’ve been here for so long. One thing I do know though, is that we need to get out of this Vrealm.”

“Too right.”

They climbed a set of stairs and emerged onto a long, curved passageway that had doors on one side. There were a few dim lanterns on the opposite wall and the carpet was rich and deep. The sound of many things laughing came from the other side of those doors, and Toby jumped.

“There’s more in there. Let’s find somewhere else.”

“No. That’ll be the best place to hide.”

Toby stared at Josh as if he had turned into a pineapple. “Are you crazy? Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire. Let’s just go.”

“No. Think about it, Toby. We fooled all those things back there. We were just unlucky, and if we’re with them we can find out more about them. Maybe even where to get out of this world. It’s the Doge that we need to be scared of. Not these puppets.”

“Yeah, but…” Toby began to protest, but Josh had already started to open one of the doors.

The door opened onto the gallery stalls of a theatre. Thousands of the cloaked figures were sitting watching the grotesque spectacle that was being performed for them.

Two real human beings were dancing jerkily on stage. On closer inspection it became apparent they were not dancing voluntarily. Ropes had been lashed around their ankles and wrists and these disappeared into the darkness above the stage. The humans jerked around in a manner that made it perfectly clear that these ropes controlled them and every time they moved in a particularly puppet-like way, the audience roared with laughter.

Toby had joined Josh in the entrance and he gasped. One of the figures sitting near the door turned to them, but after a cursory examination it looked back to the stage without raising the alarm. Emboldened by this, Josh made his way down the steps to two empty seats and settled into one of them. He tried to look at the stage, but he couldn’t watch the hideous dance so he just sat back with his eyes closed and unseen behind his mask. He felt Toby sit down next to him.

“Who are they?” Toby whispered.

Josh didn’t have time to tell Toby he didn’t know, because just then the dancers stopped. They both fell over, and one of them stared out pleadingly into the theatre. Josh could see the fear and pain in his face. Then their puppet ropes went taut again and they were hoisted up off the stage into the flies and the crowd fell silent.

The Doge had walked onto the stage from the wings.

“Good people of Vienopolis. I stand before you in need of your help. There are two amongst you who must be rooted out and given over to me. Two more Traitors who threaten the very fabric of our Utopian society.

“They have already freed some of the most dangerous villains ever to have existed in this peaceful place, and I need to catch them before they can wreak any more chaos.

“If you suspect that any among you are not who they seem, then bring them to the Iron Tower.”

Josh felt a hard, wooden hand slap down on his shoulder. “Who are you?” A dead voice said softly. “Are you the impostors?”

The Doge was walking off stage now and the whole theatre was on its feet applauding his short speech. Josh pushed the hand off his shoulder, stood up and started to clap along with everyone else.

He could smell peaches.

The theatre started to swim about him and darkness gathered around the edges of his sight. He could vaguely hear Toby’s voice whispering urgently beside him, beseeching him not to leave him alone. He felt like he was plunging into a deep well, until suddenly he lost consciousness completely.